Skyship
A skyship is a sailing ship that flies, built with a combination of engineering ingenuity and magic. Skyships are uncommon in the world due to their expense and weight limitations, which make them mostly unsuitable for long-range travel. Helm Any skyship must have a helm, a magicaly device that controls the skyship. Elemental Engine One of the most common types. A elemental Engine is the heart and soul of any airship. It is the device that provides the airship with its ability to fly. Physically they are often large spheres, with lots of additions. They resonate an energy field around the vessel to which they are bound, allowing it to levitate and maneuver in the air, and various devices may be used to alter or augment this field in different ways to provide different effects. Better quality Engines tend to result in a swifter and more responsive vessel, capable of supporting multiple layers of auxiliary fields and other upgrades. An Elemental Engine is powered by energy generated by elementals bound within the Engine and exploited by a combination of arcane artifice and mechanical energy converters derived from Engine Technology. Elemental Engines have been known to fail from time to time, allowing the bound elementals to escape and wreak havoc on the ship and its crew, and piloting such a vessel into areas with natural antimagic fields is an exercise in recklessness, as there is every chance that systems could fail at any moment. Basic Skyship Basic Skyship Gargantuan Vehicle Basic Elemental Engine Max Speed: 15mph Speed: Fly 70ft (poor; can hover) Cargo Capacity: 20 Tonnes Attack: Ram 10d6 AC: 3 Section HP 60 (hardness 5); 10 sections to sink Includes birds nest, poop deck with captain’s wheel, shared quarters and mess room, Engine room and a storage deck. Cost: 20, 000gp Another CONSTRUCTION OF FLYING SHIPS STEELFORM(Level 7 m-user spell)/IRONFORM (level 6 m-user spel1) producing material (1" x 100' x 100'). STONEFORM (level 5 m-user spell) producing (10' x 10' x 10'). Lets go with a 1 crew Interdimensional warp fighter. Describing it: A Steel Arrowhead with a cockpit that is a Crystal Ball turned inside out so the pilot can use it to pilot. The Pilot is in a crystal ball 360 degree Heads up display. The Fighter has GATE to allow it to jump to the Plane of Air and then return to the real world using the formation of Planar Gates as a means of attack. Hull Enchantment: 1 x Steelform (7) 1 x Stoneform (5) 2 x Fly (3) 2 x create air (3) 1 x clairvoance (3) 2 x Gate (9) Total levels=45 x 5000gp=225,000gp enchantment cost, 225 days enchanment time The Pilot needs the ability to cast dimension door to enter and exit the craft - fighter crew would be 7th level wizard or better... FlySpeed: as flying vessel/spell Special Attack: Tornado (from jumping to and from the Plane of Air in proximity to Target) Armour: +12AC bonus Stuff= Getting it Aloft Options: Option 1: That Flying Ship in the Forgotten Realms book "Shining South" Pros: Traditional to FR. Looks like a ship -- A Wondrous Item! Cons: Needs a Huge Crew. Wooden, and normal wood even. Expensive. Slow. Looks like a ship... uses Wind Power to move. Utterly vulnerable to natural antimagic area. Also vulnerable to attack. Option 2: Eberron Style Flying Ships -- an item with a Bound Elemental, uses alchemically treated "Soarwood", and a bound elemental in a ring. In the core eberron book. Pros: Fast. Traditional to Eberron. Relatively Inexpensive. Lighter than Air -- will float, even in an antimagic area. The thing that gets it in the air does NOT REQUIRE magical crafting to make! Cons: That type of elemental binding likely isn't ethical. That type of elemental binding also needs a specific feat at high level. Soarwood isn't too terribly durable. Locomotion doesn't work in a natural antimagic area, just the floating. Probably needs a crew too, though the crew is relatively small. Option 3: Enchanting a Stronghold Space using the Stronghold Builder's Guide rules Pros: Can be made of lots of interesting materials--not necessarily wood! Gives movement for interplanar options. Can be quite fast. Gives swimming/earthgliding/etc options, great! Cons: If you use these rules for the main way of doing locomotion, then the price starts adding up real quick. Very vulnerable to a natural antimagic area. Option 4: Making the ship an Effigy (From complete arcane) Pros: Self Locomotion! Can follow orders! Can look like an animal or wyvern with added hit dice (and thus size) or whatever! Can fly on it's own power! It can fly and move about in antimagic area! Cons: Has a low number of hit points, so it can be 'killed' with direct hit point damage. Arguably not a con -- most of the rules for vehicles have them with low hit points anyway for some reason, and it might manage to get a hardness from those. It's not necessarily a 'smart' ship at this point. Will need to flap it's wings to stay aloft. Might need some house rules to get the right form of an effigy -- making it so much bigger than say, a Wyvern, might require DM intervention. Will need silly template stacking to not be too vulnerable. Might be targeted by intimidated people (AHH ITS A WYVERN AHHH KILL IT!!). Option 5: Using the actual spell (Suspension) in Shining South that is the basis of their ships, maybe in a Spell Clock or a Repeating Trap Pros: Really, Really cheap. I mean, a spell clock or repeating trap or whatever of this would be RIDICULOUSLY cheap. Can get very large amounts of weight aloft. Did I mention cheap? Cons: Suppressed in an area of natural antimagic. It requires spells to be actively cast, either by a person activating a wondrous item, or casting the spell from their list, or pulling a lever for the trap, or a Spell Clock automatically casting it. Doesn't provide locomotion! Option 6: Nautiloid Pro: flies like a champ. Can leave the atmosphere. Cons: As far as I know, there are no 3.5e rules for these. Needs a spellcaster as a full time helmsman. Option 7: Gate Zeppelin from Planar Handbook Pros: mundane flight and propulsion, can hover, can Gate to another plane 1/day Cons: slow and big targets. getting a good place to set down is difficult... Locomotion Options not part of the above: Option 1: Get some tireless flying creature to pull it Pro: You get a few flying effigies or flying mindless undead to pull your swank flying boat! Awesome! They can keep it moving in an antimagic field, cool! Con: They can be targeted, and are vulnerable. Also the cables or ropes connecting them to the ship can be targeted. Also, having separate creatures from the ship providing movement to it gives miscellaneous problems of their own. Option 2: Decanter of Endless Water + Riverine Nozzle + Permanency-ed Wall of Fire Pro: THRUST. LOTS AND LOTS of thrust. Like, if you do things right, Jet engine thrust level! You can call it a PLASMA DRIVE! Con: You are spewing lots of water (or steam, or plasma, or whatever if you added some bits to it to heat it) behind you. This might upset people / the weather / the Druid / certain creatures. Suppressed in Antimagic area. Also, someone generally has to interact with this item to get it to do stuff. Also, problems with aiming the thrust, you'll need a fancy rudder setup. Option 3: Sails Pro: Already in most settings. Cheap. Work in antimagic area. Con: Can't generally go faster than the wind, not sturdy. Might require Stormwrack rules, which are cumbersome. Option 4: Using some perpetual motion machine (there are a bunch that can be made with D&D spells) to move a propeller Pro: Can be relatively fast Con: Easily damaged, won't work in antimagic area. Might need the heat metal / cool metal thing, or any of the other D&D perpetual motion machines options. Option 5 (part of the first section): The whole thing is an Effigy, like an upsized Wyvern Effigy Pro: It can move pretty fast and maneuver! It can fly without Suspension! Con: Cons shown in getting it aloft section Option 6: Frostfire Engine from Frostburn. Lightning Turbine from Arms & Equipment Guide or Cloudkeel from Arms & Equipment Guide Pros: I dont know these that well Cons: Expensive as all heck Option 7: Dragonfly Longship from Dragon Magazine #331 Pros: Doesn't need a big crew, fast (winged) flying speed with relatively good maneuveability has a very useful weapon Cons: Expensive, probably doesn't work in antimagic area. Option 8: Make a Soarwhale into a Zombie. Hollow it out Pro: You are flying in a giant undead zombie whale blimp Con: You are flying in a giant undead zombie whale blimp. Also the massive amount of HD means that you need to use something obscure and without a HD cap, like an Elixir of the Unfailing Servant or something. Getting it Intelligence Option 1: Haunt Shift Pro: An easy way to get it intelligence. Con: Evil, uses negative energy. Makes it, you know, haunted. Might not always let the inhabiting spirit have full control over everything. Requires some intelligent undead to start with. To bypass these issues (ie, get a Deathless / positive energy version), will need LOTS of DM Fiat / Custom spell research / questing. Probably supressed in antimagic. From a fairly oboscure source book (Libris Mortis I think?) Option 2: Embedding a Sentient Magic Item in the structure/workings somewhere Pro: Fairly easy to accomplish. Gives it Sentience. Con: Will probably only work well with the Effigy version, and only if there's some way to link the commands of the magic item to what the Effigy does. Might not give it control over all the ancillary aspects of the ship, unless it has access to lots of unseen servants / mage hand / etc. sorts of things. Probably supressed in Antimagic. Option 3: For the constructs, use Rudimentary Intelligence from Dragon Magazine #327. Pro. Fairly easy to accomplish. Animal intelligence. Doesn't require humanoid constructs, unlike the feat alternative (yay!) Con: Somewhat expensive! Needs access to Circle Magic (ie, extreme caster level buffs) to get it to normal human level intelligence. 1. Its main body must fit within a 30 ft. square, I'd make it a 30-ft. square box with the top and bottom being either domes or pyramid-shaped. Put an extension ladder on a rotating platform at the top, similar to what a modern firetruck has, but put enough sections on it that it can reach at least 30 ft. beyond the main body. There should be hatches at the top and on the underside at the least. Include plenty of places to tie ropes to. Attach several chains at the bottom, the longer they are the better, just an ordinary chain with one end welded to the main body will be better than anything more complicated. Be sure to include stairs/ladders, rooms, decks, etc. in the interior. Put a ramp at the bottom hatch that can fold in and extend out, don't worry about including a way to extend/retract it. 2. It must have sheetlike extensions, i.e. a canvas skirt that extends straight out on all sides would be sufficient, provided it's big enough. It would need to be able to fold up to fit within that 30 ft. square, but don't bother including any way to fold it up. Its presence alone is sufficient. 3. Give it wheels at the bottom, you absolutely want to put wheels on this thing. It will (almost) never use them, but just having them is absolutely necessary. Bonus points if you just put one wheel right in the middle, don't worry about how it's going to balance on it. Second, you add some custom automatic reset magic device traps. These should actually bestow beneficial spells, so you basically have infinite-use magic items that activate by touching or walking over them. A Create Food and Water Trap will make it so you won't need a place to store supplies or a place to cook anything. Add some triggered-when-touched traps that bestow Cloud Wings (SC), (Greater) Wings of Air (SC), (Greater) Mage Armor, Shield of Faith, Barkskin, etc. Also include one on the exterior which bestows one of the Repair Damage line of spells (SC), and attach small chains to the outside of the hull around it within reach of touching it. Third, you hire one or more friendly/helpful NPC spellcasters. The spell capability you're looking for is Animate Objects (Bard 6, Cleric 6) and Permanency (Sor/Wiz 5, Time domain 5) at a caster level of at least 16th. You'll be paying spellcasting rates for two Animate Objects at caster level 16+ (the higher, the better), and two Permanencies at caster level 14+ (again, the higher, the better). Note that you may have to buy two Scrolls of Permanency instead, and be sure to get them with a 3,000 XP allowance (the DMG treasure table scroll is only 2,000 XP). The guy casting Animate Objects will have to cast it on two gargantuan or smaller objects first, and then redirect each instance of the spell to the colossal ship. Two Animate Objects at caster level 16 will provide enough bulk of animation to turn the ship itself into a Colossal Animated Object. It has wheels, so its land speed is 50 ft. The sheetlike extensions will give it a 25 ft. (clumsy) fly speed. It has complete control over the movement of all of its attachments (sheet, extension ladder, chains, doors, wheel, ramp, etc.), so it can fold and unfurl the sheet and wave/flap it to fly, maintain balance on the wheel with relative ease, use the ladder and chains to make slam attacks, use the chains to keep its balance and to pick up objects, open and close its doors (and keep them from being opened), etc. Finally, the ship itself should be able to reach and touch the aforementioned traps which bestow beneficial effects. That means it can be continually buffed with Cloud Wings (+30 ft. fly speed), (Greater) Wings of Air (maneuverability improves to poor, or average for greater), (Greater) Mage Armor (+4 armor bonus, or +6 for greater), Shield of Faith, Barksksin, etc. giving it considerably better AC and movement. It can spam-touch the Repair Damage trap as often as it likes to constantly fix any damage it takes (you can bestow a touch-spell on up to eight allies in a round, so each small chain should be able to touch the trap at least eight times per round). It can load/unload any cargo itself with the chains and its immense strength and carrying capacity. It can maneuver the ladder at the top and the ramp at the bottom however you direct it to. It can use its slam attack or trample nearby opponents (technically even when flying), so it's effective in combat. It can pilot itself tirelessly and unerringly so you don't need a crew of any kind. You could even give it a Heroics trap to grant it Tower Shield Proficiency, and give it a colossal +1 Animated Tower Shield which floats nearby and can be used to grant the entire vessel total cover from one direction at any time. Base Construct Cost (as a huge effigy) 24000 Everbright / Blueshine anti rust Treatment 2000 Collar of Perpetual Attendance + Speaking Sentient Item 6000 Repair Minor Damage 'Trap' System 250 Cure Minor Wounds 'Trap' System 250 Suspension 'Trap' System 14000 Custom Enlarging Template: Size increases by 1 category, strength increases by 2, dex decreases by 2, HD is unchanged Half dragon (Copper, perhaps?) NA +4 str +8 Woodling +7 NA Effigy +4 str -2 dex, +2 NA Notes: Wyvern str 19 dex 12, large, 7 hd Stats after all of this: Weirdly awesome Effigy Wyvern Airship 7d10+40 (84 HP) 20 ft Move, fly 60 ft poor Huge, Mindless Construct DR 5/Adamantine str 33, dex 8 19 points of natural armor Sting 1d8, bite 3d8, 2 wings 2d6, 2 talons 2d6 (plus strength for these, of course) BASE PRICE Huge Body: 10,000 7 Hit Die: 14,000 Blueshine/Everbright ad-hoc anti-rust and anti acid treatment cost: 2,000 Cost of making it an airship and making controls: Assumed part of cost of body Total: 26000 Cost reducers: Make it yourself: *.5 Apprentice Craftsman * .9 Extraordinary Artisan: * .75 Total cost to make yourself, of this aspect: 8775 gp Embedded Item (in workings): Collar of Perpetual Attendance Base price 2000 Speaking Sentient Item: 4000 Lesser Powers Ad-Hoc removed, instead it can use the construct's senses and pilot the construct directly, or direct it to move using it's own capabilities, and also keeps the interior clean and tidy, and may even be able to perform minor repairs Base Price: 6000 Cost reducers: Make it yourself: *.5 Apprentice Craftsman * .9 Extraordinary Artisan: * .75 Total cost to make yourself, of this aspect: 2025 Suspension VTOL and Emergency Landing Repeating 'Trap' system (if the construct is rendered inert, this should enable the airship to land safely. it also allows it to hover and take off and land vertically) 500 gp x spell level 4 x Caster Level 7 = 14000 cost given is NOT sale price, it is making it yourself price, so no .5 for making it yourself Apprentice Craftsman * .9 Extraordinary Artisan: * .75 Total cost to make yourself, of this aspect: 9450 Total cost for an Artificer with a few relevant feats to make a kickass Huge Wyvern airship that can fight and has some awesome features: 8775+2025+9450 = 20250 Which is just a little bit above buying a +3 weapon on the open market... not making one yourself with those feats, mind you... but still... "steam engines (monstrous "rolling-beam" stationary types, akin to those found in Cornish tin mines and elsewhere AND tiny 'using a fire one builds in a bowl' sorts) are in common use all over Lantan, but remain "dangerous" curiosities elsewhere (although many Faerunians know about harnessing the hot gas from a fire collected through a hood-and-pipe apparatus). As several posters have mentioned, Gond rules such pursuits, and copious prayers to him will be a part of any steam-work. What the Realms DOESN'T yet have is reliable steam propulsion (locomotives, that is -- although miners'-sweatwork and donkey- or mule-drawn mining railways, with little 'tip' ore cars, ARE used here and there, and are known to all dwarves and gnomes). Distillation and other simple steam-related procedures are widely known if not widely understood." Category:Ships Category:Skyships